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The Kansas Jayhawks (8-1) have a chance to push their winning streak to nine as they take on the 5-6 UMKC Kangaroos at Sprint Center on Saturday.
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How to Watch UMKC vs Kansas
The game (5 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on TV anywhere, but you can watch it live on ESPN+
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Once signed up for ESPN+, you can then watch UMKC vs Kansas live on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone (Android and iPhone compatible), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or other streaming device via the ESPN app.
UMKC vs Kansas Preview
Since dropping its opener to Duke, Kansas has won eight in a roll — the latest being a 95-68 victory over Milwaukee. Devon Dotson (22 points, 9 assists) and Ochai Agbaji (22 points, 8 rebounds) led the way in the victory.
Thanks to the strong showing and current No. 1 Louisville losing this week, Kansas — currently No. 2 — seems destined to be the top-ranked team in the land next week if they get by UMKC without a massive upset.
Kansas coach Bill Self wasn’t ready to dub his team No. 1 just yet.
“I haven’t seen Ohio State play enough but they look great to me,” Self said. “Everybody’s had their good moments and everybody’s had their struggles so far.”
The game will be played in the Sprint Center, where Kansas lost to Washington last year in a non-conference matchup. It’s no Allen Fieldhouse for the Jayhawks.
We haven’t played well in this game historically,” Self said. “We’ve won many of them, but like last year when we crushed New Mexico State — beat ‘em [by] one. There’s been a lot of games even going back to Kemper [Arena in KC], when we played in Kemper, that were just kind of boring games, and there’s not as much energy.
“It’s not that the attendance is poor. It’s not that fans are bad. It’s not anything like that,” Self added. “I think when you get outside your building in a neutral-site-type setting — even though it’s not totally neutral, though it could be this week — I think sometimes people want to be entertained. And then when you don’t play well or play boring and they’re not entertained, it can become kind of a dull atmosphere.”
UMKC is just 5-6 this season, losing three of their last four. However, the Kangaroos had a strong showing against Iowa State, despite the final 79-61 score. It was just a one-point game with just over 11 minutes remaining in the half.
“Their scores can show that they’ve really really improved,” Self said. “When they went to the Bahamas they played pretty well to beat George Washington and East Carolina, and then the team they lost to in the finals was Liberty, and Liberty’s still undefeated. And they played Iowa State good. That score wasn’t indicative of how close that game was.”
Kansas is a massive 23-point favorite for the game, which as a total of 137.5 points.